


Take My Heart (But Not My Hand)

by Ghostinthehouse



Series: Touch Me Not [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol, Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale's True Form (Good Omens), Crowley's True Form (Good Omens), Crucifixion, Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mentioned Gabriel (Good Omens), Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), Nightmares, Other, Pet Names, References to Canon Typical Biblical Violence and Death, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Touch-Starved, Touch-Starved Aziraphale (Good Omens), Trauma, Wings, touch-averse Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2020-09-28 12:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 19,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20425802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: "You know he needs touch?""Yeah," Crowley says, following Adam's gaze to Aziraphale. "I know. We'll figure it out, he and I. We always do. Eventually."





	1. At The Ritz

The realisation Crowley brings back from Heaven is "No wonder Aziraphale likes touch". He's seen how Aziraphale has made his bookshop into the opposite of Heaven - warm, cozy, and cluttered, where Heaven is cold, bare, and isolating. He just hadn't connected that it was personal as well.

And touch is the one thing he can't offer easily.

He would touch Aziraphale if he could, but it always feels like static electricity sparking and crawling over his skin when he touches anyone, and that in turn kicks in his snake reflexes. Snakes, he's discovered, aren't big fans of touch either. They recoil from it and coil in on themselves defensively.

It's easier when he's the one reaching out. He can brace himself for the sensation, because he's expecting it, he's chosen it for that moment of contact. He's learned to cope with hands touching when he must, for handshakes and the like. He got through holding the Antichrist's hand at the end of the world - though maybe all those years of holding Warlock's hand through gloves helped there, he isn't sure. Maybe it was just the sheer blazing adrenaline surging through his human body after all.

He does, however, know that wearing Aziraphale's body is like being touched all over, all the time and he hates it. Pretending that his skin doesn't feel as if it's about to crawl right off him drains all his energy, and on top of that, he has to pour more effort and energy into acting like his angel too. It's to save his angel's life, he reminds himself, and for that he will do almost anything.

Only afterwards, back in his own body, back in the Ritz again, does he realise quite how drained and exhausted it's left him. He sags into his chair, one arm hooked over the back to keep from sliding off completely, and he's slow to respond when Aziraphale starts talking.

They toast and eat and he tries to listen as Aziraphale rambles happily on and doesn't, thank Someone, try to touch him in any way, doesn't even try to goad him into initiating, only places his hand close on the table like an invitation Crowley doesn't take up. His angel doesn't push and that feels like a balm on his poor skin and heart.

"Oh, go home and sleep for a week," he quips, only half joking, the one time Aziraphale asks what he's going to do next, and that seems to be enough.

At least for now.

***

The realisation Aziraphale brings back from Hell is "No wonder Crowley hates being touched". He's seen how Crowley has made his flat into the opposite of Hell - open, clean, and stylish, where Hell is damp, cramped, and grimy. He just hadn't connected that it was personal as well.

Because Hell is also a place of constant jabs, pokes, prods, and shoves as the demons move through crowded passages. Every touch must remind Crowley of being down there, in a place that hates him, and that he loathes in return, and Aziraphale will do almost anything not to inflict that on him.

And yet he craves touch so badly that he isn't sure he can ever give it up entirely.

He's learned to soothe it by himself as much as he can, with snug waistcoats that put pressure in just the right places, tight wrapped blankets and one hand clasping the other, but sometimes the ache to be touched by someone else gets too much. Sometimes he can't stop himself from goading Crowley into body-slamming him against a wall or a shelf and just soaking in all the contact of it until Crowley runs out of things to snarl at him. Sometimes he can make do with Gabriel's careless shoulder claps along with human manicures and haircuts.

None of the other angels seem to have this problem with touch, so he ought to be fine. He shouldn't need it. But then again he doesn't _need_ sushi either.

And even now, at the Ritz, giddy on survival, he sees himself reaching out to Crowley, closer than he ever has before, and makes himself lay his hand on the table, not that thin black-clad arm. Crowley does so much for him, it's the least he can do in return. It's enough to touch gazes so openly, he tells himself.

At least for now.


	2. With The Them

The first time Aziraphale and Crowley meet the Them after everything is over (Adam made all the adults remember them as always having been his godparents) Adam comes charging over to greet them, arms wide, and Aziraphale sees Crowley flinch back in anticipation of the impact. He sticks out his own arm before he thinks, blocking Adam's way.

"My dear boy, ask first."

Adam oofs out a breath and then pivots and hugs Aziraphale instead. "Ask what?"

"You should always ask before touching Crowley," Aziraphale tells him, trying not to blush at the look of relief and gratitude Crowley throws his way. "He's thrown me into walls on occasion, and I should hate the same to happen to you if you startle him." He turns his head to demonstrate, still blocking Adam with his arms. The hug feels awfully good to him, but he can tell Crowley doesn't feel the same way. "Crowley. Hug, handshake, or wave?"

Crowley lets out a breath. "Wave," he says, face softening to a slight smile and waving one hand. "Hi, Adam."

Adam pulls away from Aziraphale and waves back. "That's cool. Hi, Crowley. Hello Aziraphale. Come and meet my friends, properly this time." He bounces off in the right direction looking back at them over his shoulder.

Crowley says, with a crooked grin, "Put your arms down, angel, this isn't the eastern gate, you don't have to block it permanently."

"Oh." Aziraphale realises his arm was still out in front of Crowley and drops it to his side. "So sorry about that."

"S'fine." Crowley shoves his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and saunters after Adam.

Aziraphale paces alongside him, hands clasped behind his back.

"Right," Adam says, when everyone's caught up. He points to each person as he names them. "Pepper, Wensleydale, Brian. This is Crowley, don't touch him without asking, and Aziraphale."

Pepper glares at Crowley. "You wanted Adam dead."

He meets it steadily, eyebrows rising above the rims of his glasses. "Yeah," he says with a sigh. "Couldn't see any other way at the time. 'Course he had the better idea in the end, and I can't say it doesn't have distinct advantages." He glances at Aziraphale, as if reminding himself that the angel was there, in the corporation.

"Why'd you even go there? He's a kid."

"Well," Aziraphale begins.

"Hush, angel." Crowley regards Pepper for a long moment. "You killed War, right?"

"Yes."

"If War looked like a kid, would you kill her?"

"Well, duh, she's War. She's a bitch."

"And Adam's the Antichrist." Crowley looks at her, his head a little on one side and his expression telling her to keep going.

"Oh, all right. Point made. For now."

"Happy to discuss philosophy at length another time." He glances over at Adam. "He's a fine kid though. Human incarnate."

Adam grins back.

Wensleydale asks, "Mr Aziraphale, are you no-touch-without-asking too?"

"It's always polite to ask," Aziraphale tells him, "but I don't mind being touched. And really, it's just Aziraphale, though much of the time I go by 'Mr Fell'."

"Cool," Brian echoes. "Do you like ice-cream?"

Crowley's mouth ticks up at the corner and he offers in a conspiratorial stage whisper, "He loves it." Before long, Aziraphale was deep in a discussion of ice-cream flavours, how many existed, how they tasted, when it had been invented, and what was his favourite one and he'd relaxed enough that his hands were dancing and fluttering in the air as he spoke. Crowley watches with unmistakable indulgent fondness on his face. He never wants to take those hands in his own and trap them into the stillness of twined fingers, not when their dance is so beautiful. He paces instead, circling Aziraphale out of long defensive habit, and observing from all angles.

Adam keeps pace beside him, curly hair ruffled by the breeze. "Should I have asked before I took your hand the first time?" he asks quietly.

Crowley glances at him, the movement scarcely noticible through his dark glasses. "I seem to remember I offered and you accepted. That's kind of an ask in itself, isn't it?"

"You sure?"

"My choice," Crowley says, turning his head so Adam can see his face, and the tighter line of his mouth. "Wouldn't have reached out if I wasn't prepared to be touched, ok? S'fine, kid. S'just - I'm a demon, Adam. A demon and a snake. Touch in Hell is more about pain and control than anything else, and snakes aren't much for touching anyway." He looks away, and a muscle clamps down in his jaw. "I prefer to do it on my own terms, is all."

"You know he needs it?"

"Yeah," Crowley says, following Adam's gaze to Aziraphale. "I know. We'll figure it out, he and I. We always do. Eventually."


	3. In the Bookshop

The first time it happened, Aziraphale was reading at his desk. Crowley sauntered up, announced, "Your cocoa, angel," leaned past him to set it on the desk beside him, and _rested one hand lightly on Aziraphale's shoulder as he did so. _Aziraphale went utterly, completely, totally still under that touch, not even daring to breathe, as the warmth of it sank through his layers of clothing and laid a balm as light as the touch itself over an itch he hadn't even realised was building to a familiar ache.

Crowley straightened all too soon, pulled his hand away, and came to perch on the other end of the desk. Back at his usual distance, he sipped his own mug of coffee. "Breathe, angel, it's only cocoa," he teased, grinning. Aziraphale made himself look up and smile back as though he couldn't trace every precise millimetre of where Crowley's hand had rested on his shoulder.

It had to be accidental, surely. Crowley never ever touched anyone casually, not that Aziraphale had noticed over 6,000 years. He didn't think wall-slams counted, or patching each other up, or the occasional mutual drunken assistance. Even with Warlock, she'd been deliberate about touch, not casual, and she'd worn gloves to reduce the amount of actual contact she'd had with the boy.

But then it happened a second time. And then a third. Always a light contact. Always on his shoulder or upper back, where there were the most layers of clothing. And never with any consistancy except that it was just in time to soothe a building discomfort that he hadn't consciously registered. Then, finally, he managed to turn soon enough to catch Crowley reaching out with jaw gritted. "Crowley!" he got out, full of exasperated affection. "You don't have to touch me if you don't want to. I know you hate touch."

Crowley paused, hand half extended, and then drew it back to his side. He brought his other hand up, pulled off his sunglasses and met Aziraphale's gaze without any barrier between them. "Is it enough?"

Aziraphale swallowed at the nakedness of the stare engulfing him and clasped his own hands tightly so that he didn't accidently reach out himself. He was not, he told himself, going to impose on Crowley for this. But neither, under that stare, could he bring himself to lie. "I- I don't know," he said at last.

Crowley looked him over, yellow eyes lingering on his clasped hands, and then lifting to his face again. He sighed. "Obviously not. I'll get my gloves."

"I mean it, Crowley. You don't have to do this."

"What, you'd rather wait until we end up with me having to slam you up against a wall?" He slithered past and pulled a pair of thin, tough, black gloves from the pockets of his jacket. "Pity's sake, angel, you know as well as I do that you can't get by on just human touch forever. Some of that touch has to come from those of our own stock. Angel or demon, doesn't matter. Downstairs even uses it as a torture method sometimes."

"It does? They do?"

"Usually when Sandalphon or Michael want to get in some smiting practice. Chain you up for a decade or two until you're desperate, then stake you out someplace neutral and tell the angels where to find you. Got to say, smiting's a hel- heav- _lousy_ \- way to get your touch in, even though it works."

"Oh, Crowley. When?"

He turned away, staring up at the ceiling. "14th century," he muttered. "Too many 'frivolous' miracles and my lot don't send rude notes."

"Frivolous? Really?"

Crowley yanked the gloves into place and wrapped the wrist fastenings snugly against his thin arms. "Worse, angel. _Nice_. Healed some kids, if you must know. Plague and all that."

"Oh my dear."

"Shut up!" Crowley grumbled, but there was no bite in the words. "We're on our own side now. Let me do this on my own terms. As a gift. If it's too much. For either of us. I'll stop. Fair?"

"What about Adam?" Aziraphale asked.

"What about him?"

"Is he going to need touch from us? To get by?"

Crowley grimaced, then turned with a shrug. "He's got Dog. That'll help. But yeah, I have no idea how much he's still - either of them are still - occult. Won't hurt to keep in touch, either way."


	4. At his desk

Crowley flexed his gloved fingers, satisfied by the fit and suppleness. They had been made for humans to safely handle pet birds, so they shouldn't harm anyone's wings if it came to that. Not that there was room for wings to come out in the bookshop but the option was there if this worked. He circled Aziraphale until he stood behind him, took a slow, careful breath, and laid his gloved hands on his angel's shoulders. They tingled where they touched, even with the gloves, but it didn't hurt and it wasn't anywhere as bad as touching barehanded, so he released the breath he didn't need.

Aziraphale froze almost immediately at his touch, fingers tangled together, as he sank into his desk chair. Crowley always paid close attention to those hands. The way they moved, and fretted, and danced to the rhythm of Aziraphale's thoughts could and did tell him a lot about how his angel was feeling, if not the actual thoughts themselves.

He tented his hands so that only his fingertips touched Aziraphale rather than his whole hand, and began to gently knead small circles over his angel's shoulders and upper back. Aziraphale positively melted under his hands, basking in the touch the way that Crowley basked in pools of sunlight. How anyone could enjoy the crawling sensation of touch was beyond Crowley, but Aziraphale clearly did, so he didn't need to understand it, but only acknowledge that it was a fact.

He worked his fingertips across Aziraphale's back a little more, then as the tingle strengthened closer to uncomfortable, he curled his fingers close to his palm, and dug a lower finger joint into the knotted muscles instead. They had been having a rest from touch, and meant it was back to an unpleasant but bearable tingle. He passed lightly over the spot where the attachment for the angel's wings would phase into being, not wanting to push too hard on what was almost universally a sensitive spot, but Aziraphale made little murmurs of pleasure anyway and leaned into his hand.

Crowley pulled back instantly. "You all right there, angel?"

Aziraphale made a small, blissful, sound usually reserved for a really good crepe and nodded.

"Good, because I'm about done." He flexed and shook out his hands, smoothed his palms briefly over the muscles, and stepped away. "That's your lot." He dropped onto the old sofa, and let his limbs sprawl across the space there, reclaiming his distance.

Aziraphale turned, and his mouth held a fond smile beneath pink cheeks. "You didn't have to," he said, "but since you did, allow me to thank you with a decent wine."

Crowley felt the muscles in his own back unknotting as the crawling sensation ebbed from his fingers. "Wouldn't say no," he allowed. "Want to try for wings next time?"


	5. At Crowley's Flat

Crowley smoothed the last of Aziraphale's feathers into place, and lifted his gloved hands clear. "There, done."

Aziraphale flexed his released wings lightly. The breeze he made stirred the small pile of shed feathers on the floor of Crowley's flat, and he beamed, before folding his wings back out of sight. "Splendid, my dear. Much appreciated."

"Any time, angel." Crowley picked up one of the longer feathers out of the pile, twirled it in his fingers for a moment, and then leaned in to brandish it under Aziraphale's nose with a wicked grin. "Now....have at thee, Sir Aziraphale!" he hissed, somewhere between teasing and fondness.

Aziraphale looked at him for a long moment, then stooped for a shed feather of his own. For a breath, Crowley was thrown back to the memory of the airbase. Aziraphale stooping for his old sword and fear flashing through the demon as he knelt, his only instinct to protect the kids behind him from the angel rather than protect himself.

Then Aziraphale charged at him, feather in hand, crying, "Sirrah, Black Knight. Thou shalt not stand unopposed!"

Crowley leaped back, and they were sparring for real with harmless angelic feathers.

Aziraphale's style consisted almost entirely of Heaven's moves, with just a smattering of Arthurian knight, but he moved like an expert.

Crowley's style was flashier and more amatuerish, a ragged mixture of Roman and Saxon and stage fighting, with oddments of backstreet alley fighting thrown in.

They circled the desk and dodged around the throne, feathers crossing and recrossing in mock blows. It was less a real fight and more of a dance as they leapt back and forth in the space previously cleared for wing-grooming.

It ended when Crowley put his foot on one of the other feathers and slipped. He fell to his knees with a startled squawk, then recovered enough to spread his arms dramatically and look up at Aziraphale. "I surrender to your mercy, oh great knight of the dessert menu!"

Aziraphale leaned in, breathless, feather-sword ruffled but secure in his hand. "Foul fiend! For this, I shall.... tickle you most mercilessly!" He made the epithet sound as tender as a beloved pet name.

Crowley gasped, scrambled back to his feet, and backed away, eyes wide. "You wouldn't," he tempted, his own grin as wide and breathless as his angel's.

"I most certainly," Aziraphale replied, advancing on him like the Principality he was (though his extra eyes, wings, and halo were all firmly tucked away) "shall." And with that, he lunged, flicking the tip of the feather across Crowley's neck and up along his jawline to his tattoo. If they had been using sharp blades, the wound would have been somewhere between serious and lethal. Crowley flinched from it instinctively and Aziraphale pulled back at once. "I'm sorry, I got carried away. Are you all right, dearheart?"

"Ngk," Crowley said eloquently. He touched his fingers to the track of the feather, but there was no pain and no blood. "Fine. Reflex." It hadn't hurt, he realised. It hadn't felt like someone else touching him, only an object. Which of course it was, but... "What did you call me?"

"Dear?" Aziraphale said, blinking just a little. His cheeks were flushed, either from the playfight or the endearment.

"I think it was a bit more than that," Crowley said. He leaned in again, not too close, and added just for the delight of seeing Aziraphale blush harder, "Sweetheart."


	6. At Jasmine Cottage

He felt the horseshoe ward before he got within three paces, he was that raw and sensitive from last night's nightmare. "You go on, angel," he said, masking with a grin. "Sun's out, I'm going to make the most of it and bask for a while." He backed up and threw himself down in a clear patch of grass near the bench. He'd dreamed of Falling again, but this time he'd had the all-over crawl of wearing Aziraphale's body, and instead of sulphur, he'd landed in the burning bookshop. He tipped his head up to the sun and closed his eyes, focusing on the earth beneath him, and the smell of greenery and flowers and warm soil. Not smoke. Not flames. Not the chill of Heaven and the echoes of touch crawling all over his body.

He opened his eyes again when the Them arrived and propped their bikes against Anathema's fence.

"Crowley! Hi! Hug, handshake, or wave?" came Adam's voice. "Is Aziraphale around?"

Crowley propped himself on one elbow and waved. "He's inside. Give him a hug for me, if you like."

"Will do!" Adam barreled in through the door, clearly human enough that the ward against demons didn't bother him. The rest of the Them followed close behind.

They were out again soon enough, dragging Aziraphale and Anathema behind them and chattering about knights and King Arthur and dragons. Anathema dropped down to sit on the bench near Crowley, though from there she could only see him if she twisted round.

"I wouldn't have thought he was the type to know sword fighting," Anathema said, as she watched Aziraphale demonstrating sword techniques to the delighted Them. "He's such a soft, sweet, guy."

"He's a Principality," Crowley pointed out, "he was practically made for battle. He _chooses_ to be soft."

"And you? What were you made for?"

Something very complicated and old and painful flickered across Crowley's face, and then he turned away, staring up at the sky. "Nothing I have access to anymore, book-girl."

She waited, not looking at him. When his answer came, it was as close to a whisper as a hiss could get.

"Sssstars. I was made to create and build starssss..." Left unsaid was the eternal irony that the star builder was, as a demon, expected to destroy things, and the destructive warrior was, as an angel, expected to build things up.

"The stars are beautiful," Anathema agreed, and then made the mistake of looking down. Where Crowley had been, a large black and red snake lay coiled in the sun. She yelped and snatched her feet away from it and up onto the bench.

The snake hissed in irritation and grumbled in Crowley's voice. "For Somebody's sake, he told you I was a 'wily old serpent'. What part of that did you not grasp?"

"I thought he was being metaphorical!"

"Yeah right. About as metaphorical as me calling him 'angel'." The snake shimmered and turned back into Crowley, scowling at her.

"I thought that was a petname. Aren't you together?"

"Ngk. Urk. Yes, well, it is, and I only get away with it because he is one. Angel, I mean. I thought you knew all this, book-girl?"

"Well, you thought wrong, car-man."

Aziraphale left the Them to their mock battle and came to sit on the other end of the bench. "Now then, dear," he said warmly to his wily serpent, "no need to have a hissy fit over it."

Crowley spluttered, then huffily shifted back to a smaller snake form and curled tighter in the patch of sunlight. "Ngh. Wake me up when you're ready to go. And don't touch me."

"Yes, dear," Aziraphale said, folding smug, soft, hands, and turning to Anathema. "I suppose we should introduce ourselves properly, before there's any more confusion. Are you sure you don't want to put your feet on the ground? He won't hurt you."

"He's a snake!"

"How observant of you, dear girl. Now, I am the Angel Aziraphale, Principality and Guardian of the Eastern gate of Eden, sometimes called Mr A.Z. Fell. And that 'snake' is my husband, the Demon Crowley, the Serpent of Eden, sometimes called Mr Anthony J. Crowley. We have known each other for 6,000 years. We are no longer controlled by our respective Head Offices, but we remain a literal angel and demon." He smiled at her with a kind of prim English politeness that nevertheless held that touch of the bastard that Crowley adored. "Do you have any questions?"

"What sort of demon makes stars?" she blurted.

Aziraphale pursed his lips. "That would have been before he Fell from Heaven and became a demon. It's a sensitive subject. We don't discuss it."

"Eden is real? And the rest of the Bible?"

"For the most part, though it depends on the version. Some of the translations and misprints are-"

"Hey!" Wensleydale yelled, having lost his swordfight with Pepper long enough to look around. "There's a snake over there."

Aziraphale raised his voice just a little. "That snake is Crowley's other form. Same rules apply."

The Them grinned and chorused in unison, "No touching without asking!"

Crowley raised his head a little, revealing his red belly. "Correct."

"May we?"

"No."

Brian asked, "What about questions?"

Crowley's hiss sounded as close to a grumpy sigh as a snake could get. "Fffine, jusst sstay out of my ssunlight."


	7. In Vino Veritas (1)

"Nothing touches anything in space. Not unless it's to destroy. 'S all about finding the balance point between the push and pull so things circle close around each other without hurting each other." Crowley waved his hands around each other in demonstration, and his wine stayed determinedly inside his wine glass rather than spilling.

Several empty bottles sat on the table between them, and Aziraphale nursed his own glass, even as his eyes took in everything about Crowley. The dark glasses that lay abandoned on a pile of books and the eyes that shone almost gold with the memory. The expression on his face - an odd mixture of remembered joy and old grief. The way his black clothes blended into the shadows of the dimly lit back room, leaving his face and hands alight as if they hovered in the corners of space that he was discussing.

Crowley went on, his voice soft and aching and rambling in the best way of these kinds of evenings, "S'like you and me, circling and circling around each other like you're my sun and I'm your dark-sided moon, all reflection and no light of my own. Any brightness is all from you, and anytime we shift closer it near destroys everything, 'cause I'm going too fast for you to get outta my way, an' we don't, shouldn't touch 'cause what else is the sun going to do but swallow me up forever..." He broke off abruptly and drained his glass. It refilled itself immediately and he downed it almost as fast. Shadows veiled his face as he ducked his head and finished almost inaudibly, "...or vanish, and let the black hole that's left drag me in after."

To go from that openness and joy to cramped Hell, just as full of destruction and overfull of touch - Aziraphale's heart ached at the thought. "I won't vanish," he promised, leaning forward over his own glass. "I won't. Truly."

Crowley didn't move and the shadows deepened around him. "You _did_."

Aziraphale straightened indignantly and drained his glass. "When?" he demanded, stretching his own memory, forcing himself to look at all the times he had forced himself to pull back from Crowley. Each was like a burn along his ribs, but he hadn't outright vanished - had he?

Crowley started to reach for his glasses, then paused and sucked in a ragged breath before lifting his head. His eyes had gone fully yellow, and they shone as if lit from behind with flames. "The fire," he ground out. "Here. When it all burned. You were _gone_! I - I couldn't _feel_ you."

Oh. Oh..._Fuck_. Aziraphale's instincts screamed at him to reach out and comfort his beloved, his friend, his _best_ friend. He dragged them back, not wanting to impose touch on Crowley, now of all times. He picked up the latest bottle instead, and offered him a manual refill. "I'm sorry," he managed, the words spilling out as unsteadily as the wine. "I won't - it won't - not again. I promise."

Crowley cradled his filled glass in both hands, as once he must have cradled stars, and offered a shaky smile. "See that you don't, angel of mine. See that you don't."


	8. In Vino Veritas (2)

"Everyone got so scared after the Fall happened." Aziraphale's eyes stared straight through Crowley and his voice was eerily quiet. "Each one thinking we would be next. That we could Fall for a wrong word, or look, or having the wrong friend. Everyone pulled away into themselves, and dropped every connection that couldn't be justified as essential business, just in case they found themselves in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, with the wrong people, when someone Fell. Just in case they might get pulled down by association." His hands were locked tight and almost painfully still around his glass of wine. "And nobody knew what was the wrong things and what the right things. Didn't know what had to be done to avoid Falling, so the rule became 'avoid everything'. We walked on eggshells, too scared to act or question or connect. Too scared to reach out in anyway. So scared that we forgot we were supposed to love others and settled on protecting ourselves instead."

Crowley closed his own eyes for a moment, recalling every painful time that Aziraphale had pushed him away and forced barriers between them, and then emptied his glass with a grimace that the wine didn't deserve. He didn't recall a great deal about Heaven from before his Fall, but he remembered enough to know that it hadn't been as coldly clinical as he'd seen when he'd been dragged up there in Aziraphale's body. He opened his mouth, searching for words of comfort and didn't find any, so he closed it with a snap and refilled his glass.

Aziraphale went on, like some lost and distant recording, "No more fighting and drilling shoulder to shoulder under shared spread of wings. No more wrestling or fist fighting. Nothing that involved warmth or touch in any way. Nothing that might evoke memories of the friends we'd lost or those we hadn't yet lost but might at any time. No brightness, only whiteness that would show every mark and change." His oddly flat voice didn't waver, but with each statement about what he'd lost, a tear welled up in each eye and rolled down his face, merging at the hollow of his double chin and falling silently onto his shirt.

Crowley lifted his own gaze from his wine to his angel's face and caught the faint glimmer of his own reflection in the merging tears. "Aziraphale," he breathed, but the angel didn't respond. "Angel!" he tried again, louder, with as little effect. He put his glass down hastily and clumsily on the table and scrambled around it to Aziraphale's side. "Hey, angel, come back to me!"

"When they invalided me out of my platoon and sent me to Eden, it was almost overwhelming," Aziraphale went on blankly, not even blinking when Crowley waved his hand in front of his eyes. "It was so bright. There was so much more than that cold whiteness. I was still alone, still scared, still worried, but there was colour again, and there were objects to touch even if no people and a corporation wrapping me round like an eternal hug."

Crowley hissed in frustration, swear words spilling off his serpent's tongue. His gloves were out of reach and he was not, no way, going to leave Aziraphale like this. "One last shot," he mumbled to himself, "then I'm getting drastic." He miracled up a clean hanky, knelt beside Aziraphale's chair, gritted his teeth, and began to gently wipe away the angel's tears, as he once had wiped away a small Warlock's tears. The hanky protected him from direct skin to skin touch, but little else. It was almost as direct a contact as he could bear.

Aziraphale drew a shuddery breath, then another, and blinked. "And then you came," he told Crowley softly, as his eyes softened back into focus, "and you reached out to me. You were _kind_."

Crowley drew a shuddery breath of his own, full of relief, and pulled a face at Aziraphale in order to bury his fear beneath banter. "I don't know. Using four letter words about me again, are you? Didn't you learn from last time?"

Aziraphale came out with a small, shaky, laugh. "There you go again," he said. "Coming to rescue me when I need it." He gulped his wine and took the hanky from Crowley's unresisting fingers to finish drying his face. "I don't - I don't want to push you away any more. I was just, well, scared. So so scared. Still am a little, it's worn so deep a groove in me that I don't know how not to be afraid. Not any more. Not after being expected to hold myself apart for 6,000 years." He swallowed, and his glass refilled itself. "But," he went on, his face setting harder, making him look briefly more like the warrior Principality and less like a soft bookshop owner, "I should like to learn. And Crowley?"

"Yes, angel?" Crowley settled into a sprawl across the floor at Aziraphale's feet.

"I should like to learn with and from you. If you'll have me."

"'Course," Crowley said, a genuine smile curving his mouth to have his angel back with him once more. "Of course I'll have you, you blessed - angel." He grabbed his glass off the table and raised it. "To the future. Ngk. No. To _our_ future."

Aziraphale stooped to clink glasses, and his voice was warm again, grounded again, him again, as he responded, "To _us_."


	9. With Anathema

"Is there something wrong with my cottage?" Anathema asked, sweeping her long skirt under her as she took her seat in one of the old armchairs.

"You wanted to talk to both of us, you said." Crowley turned his head to look pointedly at the autumn rain streaking down the bookshop windows. "Not the weather for sitting in your garden, so it'll have to be here."

"You don't have to sit outside. You could come in with Aziraphale."

Crowley spluttered a laugh. "With the wards you keep up? Good craftsmanship on those by the way, simple, strong, and solid, even if they are inconvenient for me."

Anathema blinked at him.

Crowley sprawled down onto the battered sofa, dark glasses firmly in place. "Hello? Demon. Remember?"

Aziraphale chose that moment to bustle back in with the tea tray and set it on the table between them. "What did you want to talk about, dear girl?" He poured, and took a seat in another armchair.

Anathema looked from one to the other. "I want to know everything."

"That's rather a large subject, my dear. Could you be a little more specific?"

"Weeelll..." Anathema picked up her cup and took a sip of tea while she tried to boil a million questions down to a handful. "If you're real, are Heaven and Hell real too? What are they like? What do I need to know in order not to make silly mistakes when I'm dealing with either of you?"

Crowley leaned forward long enough to scoop up his mug, then leaned back again, one leg hooked over the arm of the sofa. "Yes, they're real. Neither of them serves a decent drink or has decent heating, and what do you already know about us?"

"Crowley! That is not the point of 'what are they like' and you know it!" Aziraphale gave Crowley an exasperated look that was nevertheless rather fond. "Heaven, my dear, is not a matter of clouds and harps. Rather, it is a very open, white, space."

"Like a used car salesroom, as I recall," Crowley put in, "only without the cars and with more obnoxious people. Doubt it's changed much. Heaven doesn't, in general."

Anathema blinked. "You've been to Heaven?"

Crowley flicked a glance at Aziraphale, shrugged, and took a slurp of tea. "Demons, my sort anyway, started off as angels in Heaven. Then we got kicked out and became fallen angels instead. There are some demons, lesser ones, who were created after the Fall and only know Hell."

"And Hell is?"

"Hell's idea of central heating is miles of cold, damp, slimy basement with a pool of boiling sulphur somewhere in the middle. Only grimier, and with more paperwork."

"No flames? No pitchforks?"

"Correct," Crowley told her, an uneasy edge creeping into his voice. "Change of subject before they get wind of being talked about?"

Aziraphale flicked a glance at him, set his cup back in its saucer, and took over. "Neither side is exactly pleased with us at present. And no, the common visuals of both are exceedingly inaccurate, as befits propaganda."

"Oh. Uh," Anathema scrambled for another question. "What exactly is a Principality? You both say it like I ought to know it."

"Help yourself to biscuits," Aziraphale said absently, waving a hand at the plate of cookies on the table. "A Principality is, well, began as, a platoon leader in, uh, Up There's host. Army." He jabbed a finger at the ceiling. "These days, we're considered more defenders or guardians of a particular group or place."

"And yours is?"

Crowley waved an idle hand at Aziraphale's blue-green-brown eyes, and declared with a teasing smirk, "Ah, he's got the whole world in his eyes."

"Really, Crowley!" Aziraphale rolled the eyes in question, whose irises did look surprisingly like a globe of Earth, now blue as the oceans, now green as the forests, now brown as parched desert, always turning and changing. "I'm officially still the Guardian of the Eastern Gate. Of Eden. Nobody ever changed the paperwork."

"I, on the other hand," Crowley said, the smirk hardening just a little at the corners, "will remain the Serpent whatever paperwork gets filed." He set his empty mug down and slid his glasses down his nose just long enough for Anathema to get a good look at slit pupils in sulphur-yellow irises in a normal white sclera before he hid them again. "I was a wily old serpent when he was technically on apple tree duty, and the rest is history. The whole of history, really. Not being metaphorical here."

Anathema gave Aziraphale another long look, but he still didn't look anything like a warrior or a soldier, let alone a leader of warriors. He looked like a soft, mild-mannered, slightly fussy, middle-aged man who had never had to fight a day in his life.

Crowley followed her gaze, and his mouth softened into indulgent fondness. He shifted around on the sofa, arms now stretched out along the back and claiming the space for himself. "Do you know what angels have to say more often than anything else?"

Anathema blinked again. "Uh. Hello?"

"Nope. 'Don't be scared. Fear not. Be not afraid.' Aziraphale just saves himself a lot of time and repetition by doing it non-verbally. Didn't start out entirely that way of course. Guardian of the Eastern Gate and all that. Expected to be a bit scary. But after he had to revive the shepherds, what was it, angel? Eight times?"

Aziraphale wrinkled his nose at the memory. "Six times."

"Yeah, after he had to revive the shepherds ten times-"

"_Six_ times," Aziraphale huffed.

"-he started really cultivating this 'I am totally harmless and not scary at all' look."

"Angels really say it that much?"

Aziraphale nodded. "365 times in the bible, my dear, according to the common translations."


	10. On Spreading Wings

Crowley was trying, fairly carefully, to get at a particularly itchy feather when his loose wing-shoulder joint decided that enough was too much thank you, and dislocated itself in a bolt of white-hot pain. He hissed out a handful of swear words in assorted languages and manoeuvred himself onto his blocky sofa. It may have looked uncomfortable for human corporeal forms, but the low square back was just the right height and angle to support his wings when they did this. About half the time he could even use that support and judicious pressure to pop it back into place.

This seemed to be one of the times he couldn't, which left him two options. First, take a quick trip to the strictly neutral grooming grounds in Hell and get one of the other demons there to pop it back in - but even in neutrality he doubted he'd be welcome right now, which meant cashing in even more precious favours than usual. Second... he sighed and raised his voice to address his phone. "Call Aziraphale." When Aziraphale duly picked up, Crowley gritted the pain out of his voice and managed an almost casual, "Uh, hi, angel. Could you, ah, drop round to mine? I... need a hand."

"My dear boy, you only had to ask. Is something the matter?"

Crowley shifted slightly, the wing spasmed, and a hiss of pain escaped before he could bite it back. "Tickety boo, as you usually put it."

"I'll be right over." Aziraphale hung up. A minute later, he tapped at the door, clearly worried enough to miracle himself there.

Crowley snapped his fingers to let him in and endured the worried tutting at the sight of his wing. "S'nothing major, angel, just needs popping back in. It'll be fine. I'd do it myself, but the angles are wrong."

Aziraphale's hands twisted round each other, betraying confusion and anxiety. "I've never seen a wing look like that before. How does one 'pop back in' it?"

Crowley stared back for a long moment with matching confusion, because in the grooming grounds of Hell, dislocating wings were, if not routine, at least commonplace. Then it hit him. Demons' wings, those that hadn't been torn off completely in the Fall, had almost universally been damaged by it, with weak points where bones had once snapped and wing joints prone to dislocate. Once wrenched forcefully from its socket, always likely to pop out of the socket again. Angels, well, angels hadn't Fallen and didn't deal with that sort of damage, did they? Aloud he said, "I'll walk you through it. You'll need to grip pretty firmly."

"Are you sure, dearest?"

"Rather you than some demon," Crowley admitted, his breath thin under the pain. He set his chin on his shoulder in order to squint at the process. "Please, angel. Before I...lose my nerve."

Aziraphale squared plump shoulders and took up the task, following Crowley's terse instructions on lifting, pulling, and twisting. Crowley for his part stamped down on the internal voice screaming _stoptouchingmestoptouchingmestoptouchingme_ and tried not to fight his own orders, because giving in to that voice and that fight would just prolong things. The pain overrode the usual crawling sensation of touch anyway. Finally, the joint dropped back into place, taking most of the pain with it.

"Done," Crowley said with relief. "Hands off. Please." He leaned forward, flexed the wing cautiously, and then tucked them both out of sight and reach.

Aziraphale, who had let go almost the moment the words emerged from Crowley's mouth, came round to perch uncomfortably on the far end of the sofa. "How on Earth did you manage to dislocate it in the first place, dear?"

Crowley folded his arms against himself, shaky from the aftermath of pain- and touch- fuelled adrenaline, and ducked his head down. "This time? Just preening, moved wrong."

"But it isn't normal, surely?"

"Is for demons, angel." He shoved back against the incipient shock. Not the time, he told his body. Not here. Not now. "Falling that long and hard is Hell on wings. Pun intended. S'why most of us don't fly very high or far. Want some tea, angel, since you're here?"


	11. In the Quarry

Crowley rested his elbows on his knees and looked across at the Them squashed together on the other milk crate. Aziraphale had stayed behind to give Jasmine Cottage's wards a stern talking to, in the hopes he could make them more like the bookshop wards (which let Crowley through without being open to demons in general).

The Them shot glances back at him, between whispered discussions. Crowley tugged his coat a bit tighter around him. It was dry at least but, being November, somewhat chilly.

Pepper finally straightened and said, "Is now a suitable time to talk philosophy? You said you would be happy to, later."

Crowley considered for a moment, then shrugged. He had said that hadn't he? "Sure," he said aloud.

"Cool." Pepper leaned forward, also resting her elbows on her knees. "What's the difference between good and evil?"

"The uniform," Crowley quipped.

She scowled at him, and the rest of the Them sat up and paid attention too. "I'm serious."

"And you don't go for easy questions either." Crowley looked her square in the eye. "I wasn't exactly joking. It's long, and complicated, and gets very fuzzy around the edges."

"Try us."

Crowley felt Adam's eyes on him too, and grimaced, lips parting instinctively to taste the air for danger, snake-fashion. "S'how you look at something that defines whether you consider it good or evil. Doesn't matter if the coin comes down heads or tails, still got the same value. Different times have different values and consider different things evil. Not much stays the same there, given long enough. The only thing that does really, is if you treat people as people with all the free will that implies, or if you treat people as things." He smelt/tasted dead leaves, and human, and damp dog with the faintest whiff of sulphur-undertone, and distant cowpat, and damp tree, and damp stone. No danger there that he could sense.

Adam sighed. "Why would someone make people and then get angry when they act like people anyhow?"

"Aziraphale would tell you that it's ineffable." Crowley shifted, stretching out one leg, then the other. "Personally? Likely because they think of people as things. Good has to persuade people to choose it, Evil is happy to force things into line. S'why it's easier to slide to Evil than to climb to Good. Life's never really about being wholly good or evil anyway, not for humans. It's about finding the balance point between the push and pull of them that works for you."

"What about the Horsepeople?" Wensleydale asked, looking rather as if he was taking serious notes about all of this. "We dressed as them for Halloween, by the way. That was fun!"

"Yeah, well, they aren't human no matter how they look. They're - not exactly forces of Nature - more metaphysical representations of beliefs held since very early on." War had been born when Lucifer's army first turned on Michael's. She'd been golden haired then, as golden as angelic blood. Human wars had reshaped her into being red as their blood in the end, and he was grateful for the way it muted that old reminder. Death, he remembered all too well, had coalesced out of the shadows beneath the Tree as Adam and Eve finished their Apples. Famine had danced out of Cain's footsteps, following the curse that nothing would grow where the <strike>boy</strike> man stayed or worked. Pestilence and Pollution, parent and child, born out of health corrupted. The older from the health of creatures, the younger from the health of the land and water.

Pepper was frowning. Adam just looked thoughtful. Brian and Wensleydale looked thoroughly out of their depth.

Crowley hissed a sigh through his teeth and then produced an apple in his hand. Maybe metaphor would work where direct explanation didn't. "There is nothing of this Earth that is entirely one or the other. Look. Apple. Considered good, sweet, healthy, yes? Also represents original sin - the stolen Knowledge of Good and Evil. Couldn't have one without the other." He split it neatly into top and bottom halves, revealing the star shape in its centre and a dark pip. Even Fallen, the thing the once-maker of stars was best known for was, at heart, a star. Probably part of that ineffable divine sense of humour. "And the pips here? Well, they're a source of poison. Cyanide. Killed lots of people in its more pure form. One pip alone isn't going to hurt, mind you, but you eat a couple pounds of pips at once and you're in trouble." He split the halves again and passed over the four apple pieces to be eaten by the kids.

They bit in cheerfully, and watched him.

He shrugged. "Same goes for people. I've met people responsible for mass-murders - millions of deaths, minimum - who loved their families and painted pretty pictures. I've met people that humans generally consider good that did some very nasty things behind everyone's backs. And I've had far too many commendations from Hell about Evil being done by people convinced they're doing Good, to take people's word for what they are."

Adam sighed too. "The vicar here says Heaven is all Good and Hell is all Evil."

"That's a very popular way of looking at things," Crowley said dryly, "both here and in those places. Like I said before, the difference is the uniform." He looked up suddenly, sensing "angel approaching", and spotted Aziraphale picking his way down the slope. "Uniforms are black and white. The people wearing them - not so much. Hi, angel."

Aziraphale beamed round at them all. "Anathema's making cocoa and biscuits, if you'd like to come and get them."

The Them perked up, finished their apple, and ran off, proving food was more interesting than philosophy any day of the week. Crowley climbed to his feet, a little stiff and sluggish in this cold. He and Aziraphale followed more slowly, sauntering side by side in their old black and white uniforms, not quite touching but together nonetheless.

Crowley asked, "Any luck?" and waved his hand in the general direction of Jasmine cottage.

Aziraphale smiled. "We think so, dear boy."

"Good. I could do with someplace warm."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you thought you spotted a Discworld reference, you were correct.


	12. At New Year

Mrs Young chattered over tea about how lovely it was that Adam's godfathers liked to be so much involved in his life, and how nice it was that they'd managed to come visit for New Year.

Crowley managed a thin smile, even as the mention of godfathers threw him back almost 12 years to that session in the bookshop backroom where he had tried with hidden, aching, desperation, to persuade a stubborn angel to help him prevent the end of the world. Right family, wrong boy though it had been in the end, he'd still cared for the boy long enough and deep enough to miss him.

Aziraphale flicked a brief glance at Crowley, took in the look on his face, and then proceeded to smile and nod at all the right points and keep the Youngs' attention on him.

After a while, Crowley slipped out while everyone's attention was elsewhere.

Adam found him outside, leaning against the Bentley, hands stuffed in too-small pockets and a wistful twist to his mouth. "You ok?"

"Just wondering how Warlock's doing," Crowley murmured, looking up at the moon, which was about the only thing guaranteed to be shining down on Warlock too.

"I sent him to America... I meant it as a gift, but... Is he family to you?"

Crowley gave Adam a sideways look from behind his glasses. "No blood relation, if that's what you mean. We - we thought he was you for eleven years."

Adam shook his head. "Family's not about blood. It's the people who're there for you and care for you," said the boy who had chosen his adopted human father as his real father.

"Maybe we were family to him. Never in name though. Just his nanny and a gardener. He'll be growing up, maybe doesn't need us making things worse than we already have."

"You let me choose what family I wanted to be around," Adam opined. "Least you could do is give him the same choice."

The Demon Crowley, Serpent of Eden, Tempter of Eve, dropped his gaze from the moon to the Antichrist, the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness, regarded the boy's very human eyes for a long moment, then nodded. "I'll send him a card, make sure he's got my number if he wants to get in touch. Thanks, Adam."

"You're welcome. You going to be out here long? Dad got worried."

"And Aziraphale?"

"Poured himself another cup of tea and said you'd be back when you were ready." Adam looked up Crowley. "Something about the stars?"

"Sounds about right."

"And are you ready?"

Crowley drew a deep breath he didn't need and looked up into the clear sky for a long moment. Then he pulled his hands from his pockets, flexed them, and they were suddenly wearing gloves. "Might as well, I suppose. Can't see Alpha Centauri from here anyway. Wrong part of Earth."

"What's Alpha Centauri?"

"Binary star system. Next closest star to this one. Part of a Southern Hemisphere constellation." Crowley let his breath out slowly. His hands clenched, then opened again. "I offered to take Aziraphale there a couple of times. He - preferred to stay on Earth." He considered, then offered Adam a gloved hand. "Drag me back in if you like. Reassure your dad."

Adam cocked his head on one side, looking oddly old for his age. "There are stories behind that, aren't there?"

"None that I'm up to telling you." It was as good as an admission.

"Ok." Adam took his hand gently and cautiously, nothing like Warlock's grip, or even the hold he'd taken at the apocalapse, and led the demon back inside, declaring, "Found him, Dad!"

Crowley met the looks he got with an unapologetic shrug. "Went to get my gloves from the car and got side-tracked into stargazing," was all he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warlock getting those cards can be read over here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20774177


	13. Of Blanket Cocoons

Outside the (closed) bookshop, snowflakes skittered this way and that through the air before finally joining the grimy slush smeared all over the pavement.

Inside, Crowley was nothing more than a bundle of blankets curled up on a blocky dark-grey chair he'd miracled over from his flat, and set close to the fireplace. It wasn't even upholstered, Aziraphale thought plaintively. It looked like it had been carved out of a slab of stone, all hard angles and no visible softness, rather like Crowley himself.

Aziraphale himself was settled in his own favourite chair, one that had shaped its stuffing to cradle him perfectly over the last century or so, and was discovering that the new corporeal form Adam had given him did, in fact, have a few downsides compared to his old one. His old injury was bothering him for almost the first time in 6000 years. It didn't like the cold in this form anymore than Crowley did, and he was now wondering if and how he could get away without reminding Crowley of that particular war and its eventual outcome. Maybe if he moved carefully enough, the limp wouldn't show? He set his book down neatly on the nearest stack and braced himself. "Cocoa, Crowley?" he offered

"Mmph. 'Kay," came the drowsy reply from inside the blanket cocoon.

Aziraphale pushed himself to his feet and managed to walk steadily, if a little slowly, into the tiny kitchen and start making the cocoa. The problem came when he forgot, and took too quick a step as he gathered the ingredients. His injured leg didn't bother to hurt, it just buckled a little, and he stumbled sideways before he could counter it.

"Angel?" Crowley's voice sharpened, losing the drowsiness. "You ok?"

"Fine, fine. Absolutely tickety boo." He braced one hand on the kitchen counter to steady himself as he poured the hot milk.

Crowley made wordless grumbly noises, finishing with, "Ugh, s'cold out here." He leaned in the doorway, arms wrapped around himself instead of blankets, worried eyes bare of their usual dark glasses. "Angel, you never sssay that 'less you're not ok. Unless you're - scared and trying to hide something. What's'matter?"

"It's nothing," Aziraphale said, stirring the cocoa briskly. Crowley frowned at him and he wilted. "Nothing new," he amended. "This body Adam gave me, um. I think it's tied tighter to my ethereal one. The cold's getting to it." He straightened and tried to put more weight on his leg, with mixed success.

Crowley hissed at the look on his face, snapped his fingers, and sent the cocoa to sit by their respective chairs. "Best warm you up then, hadn't we. C'mon." He headed back to the fire, leaving Aziraphale to limp cautiously along behind him.

When Aziraphale got back to the chairs, he found that Crowley's stone slabby thing had stretched out into something more like a sofa than a chair.

Crowley patted the extra space invitingly, then crawled back into his blanket cocoon, lifting the cocoa in after him and wrapping exposed hands round it. "S'just the thing for warming cold legs, you'll like it."

Aziraphale collected his own cocoa and tentatively lowered himself onto the hard surface, trying not to touch Crowley. There wasn't a lot of space between them. To his surprise the chair/sofa radiated warmth all over, and he wiggled as the cold-stiffened muscles loosened up under its influence. "What is this?"

"S'soapstone, angel. Humans have been using it to warm stuff up for centuries. Once you get it hot, it holds the heat for ages, hardly have to miracle it at all." Crowley slurped at his cocoa, then licked the foam mustache from his lips with a forked tongue. "Won't damage your books, neither. Pad it with a few blankets if itss too hard..."

Aziraphale settled for a single lap blanket and his book, and sat back into the warmth. It was like sinking into a hot bath, only without the water and the mess. No wonder Crowley had brought this over if it was such a source of heat.

Crowley watched him, and finally set his empty mug down. "Sso, angel, you going to be dealing with - whatever this is - all winter?" He waved a vague hand, then used it to pull his blankets higher around him. "This 'nothing new'."

"I - don't know." He hoped not. He'd rather liked that his corporation saved him from dealing with the old wound. "Never came up with the old one. I didn't know ethereal - changes - carried over to bodies."

"'Course they do, angel, that's why I always have these eyes," Crowley scoffed. "And my mark too. They follow from one corporation to the next, because they're attached to my occult form." He coiled himself into what could loosely be called a humanish ball, and Aziraphale forgot to slide out of reach in time. Their hips brushed, but Crowley didn't seem to notice.

At least, not until Aziraphale began to apologise and move. Then he looked surprised. "Can't feel it," he breathed. "Must be - the layers." He uncoiled a bit, brushing Aziraphale again, considering. "Well. That'sssss new." He smiled, slow and wicked and tempting. "Looks like this may be one answer to sitting together. Enough blanket layers and... well... it..." He hesitated, eyes darting to Aziraphale's face. "It's not so bad. Touching through them."

A small smile of delight blossomed on Aziraphale's face, and he sensed as much as saw Crowley relax under it. "Well, my dear boy, my dearest, if you're comfortable, I will hardly complain. Shall I read to us?"

A look told him that Crowley hadn't forgotten the matter of his leg, but he let it drop. "Go on then," he said, cocoon edging cautiously up against Aziraphale's side, in a gentle touch almost as warming as the seat itself. "Let's hear it."


	14. In His Hold

Crowley snapped the bookshop door open and saintered in, calling, "Angel? You here?" A murmur from the back room made him turn his steps in that direction and he stuck his head through the doorway to see Aziraphale with his wings wrapped tight around him.

Aziraphale looked up at Crowley's entrance and promptly folded his wings away. "Yes, dear?" he responded, but his cheer cracked a little as he twisted his hands together.

Crowley leaned on the doorframe, watching, "Ok. What is it?"

"Nothing." Aziraphale busied himself tidying up a few shed feathers.

Crowley fixed him with his best glare and raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing you can help with."

"Angel," Crowley said very gently, "You wanted to learn not to be scared. I can't help you with that unless you talk to me."

Aziraphale mumbled something. Crowley waited, unmoving, eyebrow still patiently raised, looking as if he could wait there for centuries.

"I just want to be held!" It came out like an ancient wail, swallowed down for millenia.

Crowley stared, openmouthed, for a moment that felt like years, in an ancient echo of how they met. Then his mouth softened into a grin and he miracled a pile of tartan blankets from the bed upstairs into his arms. "Well then, bundle up, sweetheart. Let's see if the reverse of that time you read to us works as well."

Aziraphale's mouth fell open in shock and he just stared.

Crowley sighed, shook out a blanket, and draped it round his angel's shoulders. "C'mon, angel. Blanket cocoon, remember?"

"But..." Aziraphale shrugged out of the blanket in order to peel off his coat and hang it up. "I thought... you don't like touch. Why..."

"You're not making sense, angel." Crowley replaced the blanket and added another.

Aziraphale let himself be bundled up, although the spring day wasn't that cold. "Neither are you." Then Crowley wrapped tentative arms around his cocooned body. "Oh. _Oh!_ I had forgotten."

Crowley rested his chin on a blanketed shoulder. It felt very odd to have contact without the crawling sensation, but enough blankets seemed to do the trick - though layers had always helped, now he thought about it. "Well?"

Aziraphale swallowed and sniffled a bit, then whispered, "Tighter?"

Crowley took a breath and tightened his grip, watching Aziraphale's face for clues, but it didn't seem to be enough, at least with arms. He let go, wincing at his angel's muted whine of protest, and shifted form. A huge black and red snake wound its way up Aziraphale's blanketed body like a second, outer, cocoon, rested its head on his shoulder, and began to tighten its coils slowly and gently. Crowley knew he'd gotten it right when tears of release began to trickle down his angel's cheeks and he relaxed into his wily serpent's hold, closing his eyes.

They stayed like that for a while, until Aziraphale finally drew a deep breath and opened his eyes. "Thank you," he whispered, turning his head towards Crowley's snake head. "I think - I think you can let me out now."

The snake slithered off him and reformed into a lanky human. "Better?" Crowley asked.

Aziraphale just nodded, and dug out a hanky to dry his face.

"Great. How about some crepes? That little cafe you like should be open by now."


	15. On a Friday morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from the song "Friday Morning" by Sydney Carter.
> 
> "It was on a Friday morning that they took me from my cell  
And I saw they had a carpenter to crucify as well.
> 
> 'It's God they ought to crucify, instead of you and me,'  
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree."

Crowley answered his phone and Adam's voice said in his ear, "Dad wants to know if you're coming down for Easter?"

"Eh, I was there the first time," Crowley drawled. "Don't need the reminder."

"And Aziraphale?"

"He was there too, but I'll ask." Crowley looked across the back room. "Angel, Adam wants to know if we're going down to Tadfield for Easter." He saw the old grief and hurt flicker across his angel's face. "I'll take that as no, shall I?"

Aziraphale pulled a face. "Upstairs is focused on the sunday as a great victory. I - well, it's the friday that sticks."

"Same," Crowley told him, and put the phone back to his ear. "Yeah, no, sorry, Adam, we don't do Easter."

"Ok." Then, hesitantly, "What was it like? If it's ok to ask?"

"Ngk. Gimme a moment." Crowley peeled himself off the old sofa and went out past a couple of customers to sit in the Bentley, where he couldn't be overheard. "You still there?"

"Yes," said Adam.

"Right. I know you've got quite the imagination, just be careful with it. You don't want this coming true."

There was a muffled gulp from Adam's end of the line, but no words.

Crowley let out a slow hiss, almost a sigh. "Imagine it's the rest of the Them up there, already beaten half to death, and trying to support themselves on torn up ankles and wrists while they slowly suffocate to death under their own weight over the course of about a day. If it's quick. And add to that you've been forbidden to do anything to help them, with or without your power. You just have to stand there and watch. If you can bear to." He stared at the windscreen, tracing the bullet hole transfers there with his eyes. "That's what it was like, more or less." It didn't cover the dust seeping into sandals, or the love half-hidden beneath aching banter. It didn't cover not being able to be kind to the one being you care about even under the dying gaze of a man who wanted everyone to be kind to each other, because it would get both of you killed if anyone caught you at it. But you come and offer what you can anyway. Even when all you can safely do is to keep him company on a rough day.

There was a muffled noise, and suddenly Adam was sitting, curled in a tight ball, in the passenger seat.

Crowley flinched back against the door, and cut the call off. The last person to just - appear - in Aziraphale's seat had been Hastur.... He closed his eyes for a moment behind his glasses, pushing the memory of that day away as much as he could. Not enough, probably. Opening them, he said as gently as he could manage, "Adam?"

"Mm?" Adam's phone was still apparently pressed to his ear.

"Too much?"

"No, I-" Adam lifted his head and then froze, eyes wide. "Oh. Uh. Um..." He turned his head very slowly until his gaze reached Crowley's sunglasses, and then he hastily got his feet off the Bentley's seat.

"Didn't mean to pop over here, I take it," Crowley said, reaching instinctively for something lighter. "Did anyone see you come?"

"No. And I don't think so." Adam looked lost, and so sad.

He was just a kid in so many ways, Crowley reminded himself bitterly. Should have offered the truth in smaller bites. He reached out hesitantly, as he might have done more surely with Warlock, and laid a gloved hand on the boy's shoulder. "It's a lot to take," he said, his tone hovering somewhere between gentle and apologetic. "I forget sometimes, how much I've - we've - learned to carry lightly."

"I thought having a gun pointed at me was bad enough." Adam was staring out at the shop now.

"He was three times your age, and He chose it," Crowley said. "I made sure He had a choice." He hesitated, then plunged on. "We were around for Him being born too. Sort of. Aziraphale was off dealing with the shepherds. I ended up dodging around, hiding from all the prowling, protectively smiting, angels." He wasn't going to tell Adam more than that, not now anyway. Not about how he'd been hiding out with the animals, and this young girl, only a few years older than Adam and his friends were now, came stumbling in and practically went into labour right in front of him. She'd taken this female-presenting, black-clad, apparently middle-aged, person appearing out of the dark as a human widow and midwife. As a godsend, and he hadn't the heart to disabuse the poor kid. Especially when it was kind of his fault giving birth was so hard on humans and the angels, for all their protectiveness, hadn't thought to provide a midwife of their own. One of them, for hell's sake, had given him the human-standard 'do not be afraid' speech as he scuttled out, head down over the laundry to hide his eyes.

A tiny flicker of a smile came back to Adam's face, and some of the tension went out under his hand. Crowley drew the hand back before the crawling ache could spread up his arm. "Maybe think a little harder before you ask next time, eh? I'll try and think before I answer if you do. Now, can you get back on your own, or do I need to drive you back?"


	16. On Opposite Sides

Crowley hurtled up out of sleep on the wings of a nightmare, smacked his head into something feathery above him, recoiled, and fell completely out of bed. He hit the floor in a tangle of blanket, with a jolt that knocked his panicky gasping into first breathlessness, and then something steadier. He tasted the air for danger, snake fashion, and got only angel, and then home/bookshop/dust. Not an angel throwing him down from Heaven again. _His_ angel. His Aziraphale.

A moment later, said angel was peering down over the edge of the bed at him, ruffled wings tucked back out of the way. "My dear, what are you doing down there?"

"Ngh," Crowley managed, dream-sulphur drowning his words as he lifted his head from this, smaller, fall.

Aziraphale flexed a wing cautiously, just as Crowley put the bump, and the featheryness together and realised he'd accidently smacked into his angel's wing. Which must have been curved protectively above him. He winced and opened his mouth to stammer an apology, but his words were still lost in the remnants of the dream. Instead, he dragged his legs out of the tangle and buried his face in his knees, to try and scour the sulphur from his tongue and replace it with _home_ and _safety_.

Aziraphale said gently, "Dream?"

Crowley nodded faintly against his knees.

"I'll make cocoa," his angel murmured, and eased out of bed in a rustle of cloth and feathers.

It didn't seem that long before he was back and pushing a mug all but under Crowley's nose. The smell of rich chocolate loaded with the spices he preferred flooded through him, washing away the last of the dream scents. It smelt like love, like 6000 years of familiarity in a cup, all Aziraphale's knowledge of him condensed down into "I know exactly what you like and need right now, here, take it". He cradled the mug in chilled, shaky, hands, savouring the warmth and the care as he sipped, until finally he was able to crawl to his feet and drag himself back into the bed.

Aziraphale settled on the other side of the huge bed and picked up his book, as if he knew how much Crowley needed his presence right now without any form of direct contact (even if it was verbal contact or eye contact rather than physical contact) involved. He curved one faintly glowing wing up to shelter Crowley, as he had the day they had met on Eden's wall, lifting it high enough this time that Crowley couldn't accidentally hit it, and angled the other to shed light on the pages of his book.

Crowley lifted his naked gaze to the wing above him, and found a watery, apologetic smile from somewhere as he curled down between cotton sheets. Never silk, not for a snake who couldn't grip it, no matter how good the aesthetic might be. Something else that Aziraphale knew and offered as silent comfort, he supposed. Because there would be no more sleeping tonight, only lying on opposite sides and knowing each other deeply, truly, and totally. Which somehow managed to be more comforting and filled with love (at least to him) than anything more conventional. "Love you too," he mumbled, as the words came back to him at last, and buried his face in a pillow before Aziraphale could respond.


	17. In Anathema's Kitchen

"Crowley?" Anathema said, sticking her head out of the kitchen to regard the handful of people socialising over tea and cake. "A word please?"

Crowley lifted his head, raised his eyebrows at her, and came sauntering over.

She led him into the kitchen and closed the door behind them before launching her attack. "What did you tell Adam before Easter? He came and cried on my shoulder a couple of times, and he's usually so cheerful. He said it wasn't anything his parents would understand."

Crowley grimaced, and propped himself on the table. "I was a bit too honest answering one of his questions. I thought I'd cut it down to something he could understand, and I miscalculated."

"What was the question?"

"He asked," Crowley said, staring off through the kitchen window, his voice flatter than usual, "what it was like to be at the Crucifixion. Since I'd mentioned being there."

"And you told him something that bad?"

"I won't deny answers to someone's questions if I have them. I'm not that cruel, even if I am a demon." Pain, and old memories, and apologetic guilt chased each other across his face. "I didn't tell him the worst parts of it. I just - gave him enough to imagine it for himself. Kicked myself later and told him to be more careful what he asked in future." He sighed. "Look. Once you've seen an entire town or country's worth of kids killed in one go just for having lousy parents, or a lousy ruler, I guess the scale of 'seriously bad' gets a bit, uh, skewed? Out of sync with that of most humans?"

"Just the kids?"

"Oh, most of those times, the parents got killed too, and a lot of them had earned it. But the kids were basically innocent bystanders for the most part."

She just stared at him.

He fingered his glasses, and left them still hiding his eyes. "Oh, c'mon, surely you know this, book girl. Early Biblical stuff. The Flood? Sodom? Gomorrah? Plagues of Egypt? And then, not so total but still, you know, bad enough that Downstairs approves of it, you've got countless wars, and invasions, and famines, and disasters, and more plagues." He turned and raised an eyebrow. "After you've lived through all that, where do you rank one man dying in a commonplace execution method on a dusty old hill, even if you do know him? Where do you draw the lines between personal, and important, and bad?"

"I don't know, but maybe you'd better draw them a bit tighter around these kids. I rather suspect the problem is that Adam understands it well enough to imagine it all too clearly."

The demon in her kitchen looked at her for a long moment, then folded his arms and turned his head away. "Perhaps. Still not going to deny them answers." His mouth twisted around what looked like an old, old grief. "Personal reasons. Don't ask. Please."

Her heart ached. How did you comfort a demon anyway? She hesitated, then reached out to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder, as she might have with Newton or Adam.

He flinched away, twisting out of reach before it could land.

She swallowed and drew the hand back. Not like that, clearly. "I guess immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be," she said instead.

"It has its good side and its bad, like everything else in this world." He forced a grin. "But hey, grass looks greener on our side of the fence. At least from humanity's viewpoint, and that's who's writing about it. And I've got Aziraphale. That's worth all of it."


	18. Of Fire and Darkness

"I don't suppose there's a way you can safely check him for injuries?"

Anathema looked across the field from Aziraphale doing his horribly bad attempt at pulling coins from the Them's ears to Crowley beside her on the picnic blanket and back again. "He's hurt?"

"Nothing new, he says. Ethereal form affecting his corporation, he says. Goes all protective on me when I ask for details and won't tell." Crowley grimaced. "Which probably means it's whatever got him invalided out of Heaven's armies and posted to guard a gate after the War in Heaven, and he's worried it'll remind me of Falling."

"Would it?"

"It's not the sort of thing you forget." He shrugged, and folded his arms tighter against his body under her glare. "Yes, fine, it reminds me. But no more than a hundred other things remind me. And I'm more worried about him."

Anathema wasn't the sort to pray, but she definitely felt a sarcastic, "Oh, Lord, heal this self-sacrificing _pair_," coming on. She pinched the base of her nose between finger and thumb. Out loud, she said, "I could try and look at his aura, but it might not tell me anything. You two aren't human, and that makes things a bit - weird."

He shifted, drumming his fingers against his arm. "Only if you feel safe doing it. Angels can be a bit overwhelming once you look past the corporation."

"And demons?"

He gave her a look of mingled exasperation and bitterness. "Angels. Fallen angels. Makes no difference, to human eyes. I can probably veil enough of his brightness that you don't risk being blinded by it, if that helps."

She blinked at the casual offer, her curiosity itching beneath her skin, and she was beginning to understand why Adam might have asked about the Crucifixion. The pull towards knowledge was a constant temptation, and before she logicked herself out of it, she said, "Ok."

He didn't snap his fingers for a miracle, just shifted his weight a little and twitched the shoulder nearest her. "Done."

She didn't see any difference, but closed her eyes and concentrated enough to shift her vision for auras anyway. When she opened them again, there was a shadowy curtain hanging in front of her. She traced it back towards Crowley with her eyes and - ack, no, seriously inhuman something there, all shifting, twisting coils like ghostly snakes made of scarred shadows. Almost as if someone had taken a shed snakeskin, stuffed black holes, and nebulae, and dead stars inside it, and sealed off the end. And then wrapped it around a darkness so ancient that it almost glowed with the absence of light. Wings cut from a lesser darkness hung behind it, one folded in a sickeningly other-dimensional way, the other outstretched, forming the veil she had seen first of all.

He said, "Don't look at me, look at him."

Right. Aziraphale. She blinked, swallowed, and turned her head towards the - pillar of light and flame and prisms of crystal splitting the light not just into rainbows, but into a thousand colours humans were never meant to see. Far too many eyes blinked within him like individual flickers of blue and gold fire, and the crystal spun around him in constantly shifting rings and coils. And there, down where the thigh would be on a human, a great streak of twisted rippling gold that didn't shift around, but clung like a scar. He had wings too, blazing with a white opalescence, both folded in that sickening other-dimensional way.

Nausea tugged at her and she closed her eyes, shaking under the weight of that knowledge, as even through Crowley's wing, Aziraphale's fire left afterimages trapped on the inside of her eyelids. She dropped the concentration, swallowing hard and repeatedly.

"Flaming like anything, is he?" Crowley's voice was light and dry beside her.

She nodded.

"Eat something, it'll help." She heard him rummaging through the remains of the picnic, and opened one watering eye just as he offered her an apple with a smirk.

"My name," she said tartly, mopping her eyes with her sleeve, "is Anathema, not Eve. And yeah, he's got what looks like a giant scar on his - thigh? Hard to tell exactly."

He said, totally serious for a moment, "Thank you."

"It was gold."

"Would be. Angels have golden blood rather than red."

"I did not need to know that." She took the apple and bit down. He was right. The very human sensation stabilised and grounded her, easing the queasiness.

Crowley smiled crookedly and stretched out in the early summer sunlight, looking almost human himself. "Perhaps not, but curiosity likes having its itches scratched. Always has."


	19. Down the Line

"Something bit Adam and now he's not responding to anything!" a panicky child's voice blurted from Crowley's phone.

A sharp hiss escaped Crowley, and across the room, Aziraphale's head shot up. "Trouble?" Crowley nodded shortly, and mouthed "Adam's hurt," before he replied into the phone. "Deep breath, kid. What else is happening, and where are you?"

"We're in the Pit. Brian's gone to get Anathema. Dog killed whatever it was - I think. Pepper's trying to get Adam into the recovery position after he collapsed."

That made it glasses-boy on the phone. What was his name? Wensleydale. "Did the thing that Dog killed bleed? And what color."

"Ye-es. Don't know. Darkish."

Crowley's next hiss was full of snake swearwords. "Don't hang up," he said. "Just hold the phone away from you. We'll be right there." He reached one hand towards Aziraphale before his hatred of touch could catch up and stop him. "Angel, going to need both of us, I think." Aziraphale didn't question, just took the outstretched hand cautiously in his, and Crowley launched them both down the phone connection.

***

A stream of black smoke poured out of the phone in Wensleydale's hand, hung for a second in the air, and then reformed into Crowley. It was followed a moment later by a stream of white smoke reforming into Aziraphale. Crowley landed lightly and surely on the ground. Aziraphale staggered, only saved from falling by Crowley's grip on his hand. Wensley blinked. It was almost the only time he'd seen Crowley touch anyone, and the other one had been Armageddon itself.

Crowley said, "Where is he?"

Wensley would have sworn he saw a forked tongue flicker in and out of his mouth, tasting the air. He flinched back, and pointed with his free hand to where a red-eyed Dog circled a crumpled Adam with a defensive snarl. Pepper sat back on her heels as Crowley dropped Aziraphale's hand and crossed the gap with a rapid fluidity just short of slithering.

"Smart work," he ground out, and then said something sharp to Dog in a language none of the children understood. Dog stopped in his tracks, still snarling, but seeming to understand that the demon and angel were there to help, not attack. He nosed Adam's left ankle and looked back at Crowley. Crowley nodded, and Aziraphale picked his way over to join him.

The two worked in tandem, hardly speaking, yet co-ordinated. A glare from Crowley and Adam's ankle lay bare, while Aziraphale gently lifted one of Adam's eyelids. The demon dropped to his knees, reached out, and cradled the bare foot in his hands, even as lines of strain tightened his face and a sense of power crackled around him. "Can anyone see us down here?"

Pepper wisely backed away for once. "No."

The angel's hands closed around Adam's knee. "Demon venom?"

Crowley nodded absently, and then feathered wings sprang from both their backs and mantled over Adam, shielding all three from the other children's view.

"Lend me an eye, angel..."

"Gently, dear..."

Power crackled silently off both of them, just as Anathema and Brian raced in on bikes and skidded to a halt.

Crowley's back was virtually rigid. Aziraphale's stance was softer, more relaxed. A sunset glow backlit the feathers and Adam gasped audibly.

"Got it." Crowley's voice was as much gasp as hiss.

"I see it now, dear. Rather typical of Hell to try and destroy what they can't control. Let me just..."

Anathema raised her voice. "I brought bandages. And some other stuff."

"Thank you, dear. Give us a moment."

"Does he have a moment?"

"Doesss now." Crowley's wings folded back out of the way, and then vanished from view. One hand still cupped Adam's foot, the other wound a black, smoke-like, substance around his fingers as if it was string. "Let me get thiss out of your way." He lowered the foot gently, despite the deep lines of something close to pain around his mouth, and stumbled clear before dropping to the ground himself. He licked his finger, producing a dancing flame and fed the "string" into it, burning it to nothing.

Anathema darted in to take his place.

Brian came cautiously to stand by Crowley. "Is he going to be ok?"

"Should be." Crowley fed the last bit of "string" to the flame, then shook the flame itself out with sharp flap of his hand.

Pepper leaned past Brian. "Are _you_ going to be ok? You don't look so good."

"Will be." He folded his arms and tucked his now empty hands close to his body. "A lot of this is just from having to touch so much. S'normal. For me, anyway." The lines around his mouth were already begining to ease.

"So that's why you don't-"

Dog yapped, and they all turned to see him leap into a sitting-up, rather embarrassed, Adam's arms.

Anathema fastened the bandage off and, for some reason best known as Aziraphale, the sock and shoe still fitted over it.

The angel flexed his wings lightly, and then folded them out of sight. He said, "Do call if it doesn't heal up soon, dear boy."

Adam nodded, and buried his flaming cheeks in Dog's fur.

Crowley cleared his throat. "Adam?"

"Yeah?"

"Remind me to teach you how to neutralise things once you've healed up."


	20. Somewhere Under the Rainbow

A circle of gold and crystal prisms hung under the dome, catching the light and casting rainbows onto everything. Crowley stopped short in the entrance and stared warily at it.

"Angel," he said, not moving, and certainly not approaching it, "is that what I think it is?"

Aziraphale glanced up at it and beamed. "Why, yes, my dear boy, I did dig it out from the shoebox under the bed and dust it off. It might as well make itself useful, you know?"

Crowley spluttered wordlessly for a moment and then gave in to a full throated cackle and collapsed into the nearest chair. "You're using your _Principality crown_, your _Heavenly regalia_, to make a human-ish bookshop look _pretty_. For Pride. Which has the same name as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Because, 'it might as well make itself useful'. Oh, G- S-_ Earth_. It's a very good thing Heaven isn't poking around any more."

"Is it going to bother you, dearheart?"

"Uh, well, could you ah.... hang it a little higher? I really don't want to risk, er, hitting my head on something so... well, holy. You probably don't want any humans poking at it either."

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow, and then snapped his fingers. The crown slid higher, closer to the dome and out of reach from the staircase.

Crowley stayed put, turning his head just enough to show that he was side-eying the light shining through the crown. "Is it...?"

"Just sunlight, my dear," Aziraphale assured him. "Nothing more than that."

Crowley very hesitantly poked a finger into one of the rainbows it cast. Nothing happened, and a certain tension dropped from his shoulders. "Well then, let's be off. Meeting the others there, aren't we?"

Aziraphale reached for his old coat and put it on, revealing the green carnation tucked into his buttonhole. Apart from that, he was dressed just as usual.

The collar of Crowley's jacket was a bright rainbow today, rather than its usual plain red, and carried a handful of pins on the lapels (a he/him pronoun badge, 'ace at everything' in ace pride colours, panromantic and genderqueer flags). Otherwise, he also was dressed much as usual.

They strolled out, side by side, oriented on each other, clearly together, but not actually touching.

***

Down the road, they met up with Pepper, her mums, and Anathema, with Newton and Adam tagging along behind.

One of the bigoted hecklers yelled at them, "What would Jesus say, if he could see you!"

Crowley and Aziraphale looked at each other.

Crowley suggested in a murmur, "What he said that got them so upset?"

Aziraphale smiled softly, nodded just a fraction, and they turned almost in unison and yelled back, "Be kind to each other!"

"Is that really what he'd say?" Pepper asked, once her mums had drifted out of earshot.

Crowley muttered almost inaudibly, "Only after he'd said, 'Took you long enough!'"

Anathema burst out laughing.

"I mean," Crowley added, once they were well clear of the man, "he did see us a couple thousand years ago. Not together, except at the end, where he was, ngk, a bit - ah - preoccupied with other things." He glanced warily from Anathema to Adam, and then back. "But yeah. Bright young man. Did a fair bit of travelling with me, knew I cared about someone, and was polite enough not to ask who."

"He told me," Aziraphale murmured, twisting his ring on his finger, "not to be afraid to love those that loved me. He - may have known anyway."

"Oh?" Crowley twisted, legs still sauntering forward, torso angled sharply towards his angel. "So then Rome?"

"Precisely."

Anathema looked confused. "You loved Rome?"

"No," Crowley said, "Rome was the first time he invited me to eat with him. Social meeting, rather than business." He waved a hand at the bright glory of Pride spread out before them. "Kind of like this as compared to the first time we all came together. Now, where shall we start?"


	21. On the Other Hand

"I'm tickety-boo, Adam's tickety-boo, everyone's _fine_," Aziraphale says with desperate cheerfulness down the phone to Crowley, his eyes going from Michael's blade hovering close to Adam's throat to Sandalphon's smirk. "Take your time, dear." It's all the warning he can give with two Archangels standing over them. Because he knows that Crowley knows that he only uses _tickety-boo_ when things are very much not fine - and Crowley knows that he knows. The line goes dead, and he can only hope Crowley understood.

Aziraphale swallows. "He's gone."

Sandalphon's smirk widens, curling up to reveal the gold in his teeth, but Michael withdraws her sword and steps back to stand beside him. "You," she begins, and Aziraphale recognises the utter commanding tone of the Head of the Host in her voice. Sandalphon and Michael: the Archangels of Enforcement and Battle. Of course Gabriel and Uriel (Messenger and Artist) are nowhere to be seen for this.

Then from behind them, comes a painfully familiar voice. "Going somewhere?" Crowley says, straightening, oh so casually, from his pose leaning against the corner of the bandstand. The very air shimmers around him as he stalks forward, and Aziraphale catches just a hint of blue, as if he were wreathed in flames so clean and hot that they are all but invisible.

He pushes the Archangels apart, leaving smouldering handprints on their shoulders where he touched them, and they recoil with visible fear and horror. Crowley saunters between them, and stops in front of Aziraphale with a nod of greeting. "Angel," he says, as if the phone call had been entirely about where to meet up for lunch. "Got your message."

Aziraphale manages a wobbly smile and draws Adam closer to him. "Crowley!" he breathes, and if it's as much rebuke as relief, no one else is near enough to hear.

Crowley circles him, almost as idly as usual, until he stands at Adam's other shoulder, just as he did at Armageddon. He doesn't touch either of them, of course, but that's normal. "Adam," he murmurs, "I'm going to give you something. Trust me and remember what I've taught you. It won't hurt you if you believe it won't."

Adam's gaze flicks from the angels to Crowley and back.

Sandalphon snaps, "He's a demon, he's not to be trusted. Demons betray and lie, it's what they do."

Aziraphale recognises the rhetoric he's spouted only too often himself, but now things are different. Now, there is a fury rising in him, as hot as the flames wrapped around Crowley. He flexes his hand and a sword of his own appears in it. He rests the flat of it against his palm and turns just a little towards his beloved. "If you would be so kind, my dear."

Crowley looks almost blank, but Aziraphale has learnt to read his tiniest expressions around dark glasses millennia ago. That is a look of surprise and suppressed delight, and it culminates in Crowley running one finger down the centre of the blade. The sword leaps into blue and gold flames and Aziraphale brings it up into a guard position. It's probably useless. They are Archangels, and he is only a Principality, and all three are made for fighting, but he has hope and he has Crowley, and he has Adam.

Adam, who looks at both of them, and then turns his left hand, the sinister hand, the hand closest to the Demon Crowley, palm up and cupped ready to receive his gift.

Crowley draws a deep, slow breath that Aziraphale can almost hear the relief in, and tips his own empty left hand up as if pouring something into Adam's palm. A miniature pillar of fire forms between them, brighter and lighter, like sunlight flaring off damp ground. Aziraphale thinks, almost irreverently, of the last pillar he saw used as a guide. _A pillar of fire by night...*_

"Adam, your other hand please," he says, not taking his eyes off the Archangels. Michael's sword is out again, and Sandalphon's hands are fisted and swinging at his sides.

Adam obeys, without looking round, and Aziraphale breathes out a cloud of moisture and blesses it silently. _...and a pillar of cloud by day._

"There shall be a new Heaven _and a new Earth**_," Crowley quotes, lips curling back in a grin that might almost be called wolfish if Aziraphale hadn't felt it as the spreading hood of an angry cobra. "You should have paid attention to all of it."

"The wolf," he grins wider as he switches passages, "also shall dwell with the lamb.***" He looks over at Aziraphale, who catches his breath as he realises where Crowley is going and turns his own fluffy white head to meet his wily serpent's gaze. "The leopard shall lie down with the young goat." Fierce, brilliant Anathema, Aziraphale registers, and curious, stubborn, persistent Newton. "The calf and the young lion, and the fatted beast together," Wensleydale, Pepper, Brian, and... "and a child shall lead them." Adam. Who only now looks up at Crowley and takes his own breath of realisation.

"Smile at the nice angels," Crowley says, venom coiling in his voice, and Aziraphale hears an echo in his memory, _nice is a four letter word... _"Such Nice Guys, they are."

They all three turn and smile. It's as much a baring of teeth as anything else. Hellfire and Holy Water. Demon and Angel. Faith, and Hope, and Love, in the face of Heaven's vengeance. He feels it blaze up like a wall around them. And then Adam, the Antichrist, the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness brings his hands together. Fire and water combine into a single blazing ball, like a miniature sun, but he hefts it like he holds the balls he throws for Dog.

Sandalphon goes pale at the sight. Michael freezes. 

Then Adam throws the ball at them, and his young, defiant, voice yells, "Fetch!" Light flares, blindingly bright.

When Aziraphale can see again, the Archangels are gone. So are the flames around Crowley, and the demon looks as exhausted as Aziraphale feels. They make it as far as the bandstand and sink down to sit on its steps, watching while Adam plays with Dog, and a mundane stick.

Eventually, Aziraphale asks, "What was the fire?"

"Oh," replies the once-maker of stars, "nothing new. Just the heart of a sun, you know?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The pillars led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the desert after the Plagues
> 
> ** Early Revelations
> 
> *** Prophecies of Isaiah, describing the world restored to peace


	22. Of Flight and Feathers (1)

"I don't suppose we could see your wings properly?" Wensleydale asked.

Crowley eyed up the main room of Jasmine Cottage that they were all crowded into. "Not in here."

"Why not? Adam didn't even really get a chance to look at them, it's only fair..."

"Not enough space."

Adam waved an idle hand, and then snagged another biscuit. "Seen them before."

Pepper looked at him. "You have?"

"Armageddon," Adam said shortly, and stuffed the biscuit in his mouth, cutting off any other answers.

"Can we at least ask questions?" Brian wanted to know.

Crowley looked at Aziraphale beside him on the small sofa, both of them somehow managing to anticipate the other's movements enough to maintain at least half an inch of space between them at all times. "What do you think, angel? You up for questions?"

Aziraphale pursed his lips in consideration. "Yes, but I reserve the right not to answer."

"Sure," Crowley said, twisting round, his hand just missing his angel's ear as he draped his arm over the back of the sofa. He raised his eyebrows at Brian. "What did you want to ask?"

"Oh!" Brian dragged his chair closer. "Why are they different colours? Is that normal? Can you fly? What's it like? How do you look after them?"

Crowley tossed his head back with a bark of laughter. "Same way people have different hair colours, yes a bit - he's better than me, fun, no I'm not taking you up, and with my hands usually." 

"Do all demons have black wings then?"

"Nope." Crowley popped the p. "My old boss - the short one with the sash and the fly hat, you saw zem at Armageddon - has quite pretty blue-green wings." Not that he'd ever tell Beelzebub that to zir face, but they were. They had almost that shimmery look of light glinting off a bluebottle fly.

Aziraphale added, "Not all angels have white wings either, mine just match the doors I was made to guard." 

"Match your hair, too, angel," Crowley teased, and Aziraphale's cheeks turned gently pink.

Pepper cleared her throat, and they looked over at her. "So you said Aziraphale flies better. Is that for battle manoeuvring, because he's a Principality?"

Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged a long silent look, and Crowley's face tightened as though some old hurt had come back to haunt him.

"No," the demon told her, his voice suddenly flat. "I'd have flown rings round him once. I was made for the stars and space, for constant movement. But there was - a war. And, well, long story short, by the time it was all over my wings were damaged." He drew his limbs in close and folded his arms tight against his chest.

"Ok," Pepper said, and had enough grace to drop the subject.

Brian opened a tactless mouth to keep going, and got glared into silence by both Pepper and Adam. He shut it again, and finally asked, "So fingers are better for wings than brushes? My mother's always at me to brush my hair, not just run my fingers through it."

Some of the tension ebbed from Crowley, and he miracled up a common feather shed by one of Aziraphale's doves, and passed it round so the kids could see for themselves. "Feathers you want to cling together, hair you generally want to seperate the strands. Different task, different result, different tool."


	23. Of Flight and Feathers (2)

"That war you mentioned," Anathema said quietly as Adam triumphantly led them out into a night-shrouded field. "Is that the same one that Aziraphale was injured in?"

Crowley shoved his hands into his pockets. "Yep."

She hesitated. How did you go about asking an angel or a demon who were mutually consenting bicycle repairmen if they were the cause of each other's severe injuries?

Crowley looked over at her. "The answer is no."

"Are you reading my mind?"

"No, just your face." Crowley made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a sigh. "He was in the thick of battle. I - wasn't. Got mine later. When I Fell. For some reason," he tipped his head back and silver moonlight pooled on his dark glasses, "a million lightyear freefall into boiling sulphur isn't exactly kind to wings."

Adam spread his arms. "No one is going to see you here!" It sounded as much a declaration of reality than a guess, and Crowley stretched his legs to catch up with his angel.

Aziraphale turned to greet him with a delighted smile. "Well, my dear, shall we?"

"I guess." Crowley shrugged off his jacket and folded it on the grass, then shook out his black wings.

Aziraphale primly peeled his own coat off, folded it, and set it on top of Crowley's jacket so it wouldn't pick up grass stains. He unfurled his own white wings and stretched them out before folding them neatly against his back.

Pepper whistled softly in admiration, looking from one to the other. "Wow."

Wensleydale pushed his glasses higher up his nose and stared, while Adam's mouth quirked in a small smile full of memory. _Whatever happens, for good or for evil..._

Brian started forward a step, hand raised in wonder and curiousity.

"First thing," Crowley said, eyeing that hand. "Never touch someone's wings without explicit permission."

Brian snatched his hand back and jammed it in a pocket.

Aziraphale gave him a sweetly grateful smile and half turned, spreading his wings to either side.

Crowley eased round to stand by his angel's open wings, and crooked a finger to the kids, inviting them closer. Anathema and Newton drifted in behind. "Second. The basics. These long feathers are primaries. They're for launch and steering, mostly. Next along, you've got secondaries. That's your lifting power, and the wingshape gives an idea of how someone flies. Narrow wings give you more speed, broad ones give you more power, it's a trade-off. Covert feathers above the primaries and secondaries to provide a smooth lifting surface. Got it?" He stretched his better wing out briefly, showing it longer and slightly narrower than Aziraphale's, so they could compare shapes. After a moment, he grimaced and slid off his glasses. They'd only come off in midair otherwise. He tucked them into the jacket pocket and tapped his angel's human shoulder. "Launch me, would you?"

Aziraphale made a stirrup of his hands and stooped to let Crowley set his foot in it, then boosted him straight up. It was similar in some ways to giving someone a leg up onto a horse.

Crowley pushed off, letting the boost carry him above head height, and spread his wings cautiously, avoiding the angles that caused the most strain. He also set a miracle ready to snap him back to the ground if either of his wings dislocated (and therefore stopped working) in midair, and then found himself a nice thermal to lift him higher with minimal effort. "Coming, angel?"

White wings shimmered into view below him, and Aziraphale leapt upwards, wings pumping, blasting air and summer dust into the eyes of the human watchers.

They spiralled around each other, each catching the thermal in turn, moonlight and starlight catching in the edges of their feathers, sharply aware of being observed from below.

Aziraphale swooped past Crowley and then swung back. "You think I should turn on the glow? Give them a better view."

"Best not," Crowley muttered, tilting his wings to glide a slow, easy, circle around the edges of the field (and not incidentally the angel). "Make a target of yourself that way."

"True."

The breeze ruffled Crowley's hair and feathers, and he revelled silently in the sensation, and opened his mouth to get the full air-scent on his tongue. Aziraphale looped past him, climbing and diving, but keeping it simple. Muscles long unused stretched and flexed and then began to ache. Crowley sighed. "Going down, angel," he warned, and began to tighten his circles, spiraling downwards.

Aziraphale flicked his wingtips in acknowledgement and kited himself up to a point where his downdraft wouldn't send his fellow flyer tumbling.

Crowley backwinged with a grimace, and dropped the last few inches to the grass with a soft thud. He miracled his glasses into his hand and slid them into place, then tucked his wings back out of sight, and got out of Aziraphale's way. "All clear!"

"Thank you, dearheart." Aziraphale came down in a spectacular plunging dive that he pulled out of at the last moment with hard beats straining under his wings and landed rather harder than Crowley had.

Crowley grinned. "Show off," he teased.

Aziraphale had the grace to blush, though the darkness hid most of it. He also folded his wings back out of sight and reached for his coat.

Brian said softly, sounded awed. "That was grand," and the rest of the Them chorused agreement, even Adam.

Crowley held his angel's coat while he slipped it on, letting his fingers brush against his beloved's shoulders at the last, and then shrugged into his own. "It's been a while," he allowed. "But it wasn't bad, I guess."


	24. In a Reborn World

"Well," Crowley said, slouching back in his chair as birthday party chaos reigned over the Youngs' garden, "at least we're not waiting for a dog this time."

"Indeed." Aziraphale primly blotted a cake crumb from the corner of his mouth. "What a difference a year makes. Though if you miss it, I'm sure I could..." He wiggled his fingers to loosen them, provoking the groan he'd expected from his demon husband.

" _No_ , angel. No and no and no. Besides, Adam's already seen all of your tricks."

Aziraphale mock-pouted, and folded his hands together, hardly conscious of the thumb ticking back and forth across his knuckles like a metronome as his body tried to self-soothe the half-squashed craving for touch. "But it's fun!"

"Fun?!" Crowley's head turned towards him in an exaggerated tilt and then stilled. "Oh,  _angel,_ " he said, his voice suddenly shifting from teasing to fond exasperation. 

"Hm?"

Crowley looked round, and then leaned in, his hand snaking up to rest on Aziraphale's shoulder blade.

Even that small touch made the angel suddenly aware of how much he ached for more. "Oh." He dropped his own gaze to the ground for a long moment, trying to push the ache away. He shouldn't, really shouldn't be this bad...

Crowley murmured, tone all teasing flirtation, words too soft for anyone else to make out. "When we get home, angel, I'll get the blankets out for a cocoon, even if it is summer. How does that sound?"

The ache was fading a little under Crowley's hand, and Aziraphale flicked an equally flirtatious glance and a tiny smile at him. "Good. Like I'm a coat you're trying to keep in tip-top condition," he murmured back. "And the ache will always be there. Underneath, I mean."

"Yeah, yeah, you need touch the way I need sleep. You don't ask me to do without sleep even though you're not keen on it yourself, and I won't ask you to do without touch." The hand withdrew. 

Aziraphale forced himself not to chase after it and cling on. He was the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, the guardian angel of humanity, the protector and defender of Earth. He wanted... He wanted to lean on someone, to have someone's support rather than being the person everyone else leaned on until he was crumpling under the weight of it. He wanted to be held, to be safe, to be the one protected, for once. Crowley had always done his best to provide that though, even if it wasn't physical support. "What about hugs?"

Crowley rolled his whole head, not just his eyes. "Go hug Adam, angel, if you want to hug someone." He finished with a gentle tenderness in his tone and a wry quirk to his mouth, "It's good for both of you."

Adam appeared beside them as if just mentioning his name had summoned him, and grabbed Aziraphale's hand. "We can't decide which cake is best. Come and help us choose!"

Aziraphale went willingly enough, revelling in the easy way the boy touched him as much as in the touch itself. Sure enough, there was cake, but there were also people leaning trustingly against him and brushing past him as they tried out the different kinds. And that was almost as good as the cake itself.

***

Crowley watched Adam drag Aziraphale away, not missing the conspiratorial grin the boy gave him behind the angel's back. The kid was all right. Besides, Aziraphale needed more touch than Crowley was able to give him, and he needed to get it from somewhere. Part of the figuring it out meant finding ways around that, and Adam was tactile anyway. If the angel wasn't as likely to go into mental loops trying to reason himself out of what he wanted if he thought he was indulging a kid, and Crowley knew that as well as he knew everything else about his dearest angel, and used it to make sure Aziraphale didn't lose out on what he needed... Well. Was that really so different from knowing exactly how your husband preferred his cocoa?

Anathema dropped into the chair beside him, and he flicked her a glance from behind his dark glasses.

She said, "Not joining the taste test?"

"Nah. Not my thing, really. I'd just confuse the issue."

"Oh?"

He grinned and, after a quick check for observers, stuck a forked tongue out at her. "Snakes don't taste things quite the same way as humans do."

"Ah. I didn't realise. I assume Aziraphale does taste things the way we do?"

"Far as I know. Apart from a few things like sensing love, anyway." He smiled fondly at his angel's back, revelling in the ability to care openly for him. "Food made with love always tastes better, he claims. And he does like food. Always has, as long as I remember. Leastwise, as long as it isn't an apple."

"Gee, I wonder why," Anathema said, with enough sarcasm that he actually had to look at her to check she was joking and not angry. She gave him a wry smile back.

He managed a chuckle, despite the reminder stinging. There were very few people who had ever turned towards him to fix things when they went wrong. Nobody really wanted a demon making a bad situation worse, so they turned away and went elsewhere, even if they didn't quite realise why. He'd more or less gotten used to that long ago. Only Aziraphale had turned to him. Fix my loneliness. Fix this flop of a play. Fix this wreck of a situation (crepes, angel? really?). Fix the forgetting of the beloved books. Fix this stain...

And Warlock of course, turning to his Nanny with the confidence of a small child in an adult that Nanny could fix everything. Which reminded him. He snapped his fingers discreetly, and a card and birthday gift found itself sitting by Warlock's bed.

And now the Them. He still remembered Wensleydale's scared voice on the phone spilling the problem as if he - as if they - could fix it. They had. Together. But still. It was - rare, and treasured close to his battered heart.

"Oh," he said now, casual tone dragged out for cover. "Eve would have gotten there without me in time. Into everything, she was, and it's not like the tree wasn't easily accessible." _Why not put it on a mountain? Or on the moon?_ He never did get answers to his questions. Just the door hitting him (or was that Michael?) on the way out. "He likes pears better, anyway."

There was a long quiet moment. Then Anathema asked, hesitantly, "What was she like? Don't answer if you don't want to."

Crowley tipped his head back, pulling up old memories. "A lot like you, in some ways," he said eventually. "Not in looks - she looked more like Pepper - but she wanted to see everything, learn everything. Didn't have the knowledge to really understand what she was getting herself into, or who she was dealing with, but did it anyway, trusting that the person whose instructions she'd been taught to follow at all costs wouldn't let her down." His mouth tightened into a thin line for a moment, before he went on, "Even had her husband chosen for her. And then she chose to take what was given her and walk away into an uncertain world, stubborn enough to make it work for her despite everything." He gave Anathema a wry smile of his own. "Sound familiar, book girl?"

"A bit, I suppose. It is something of a reborn world, isn't it? Stands to reason there would be echoes." Anathema turned her head away, cheeks heating, and her smile going fond in a way he knew best from the inside.

He followed her gaze to Newton, standing awkwardly well away from the music player and shifting his feet in something that would make demons look like good dancers. "Indeed. Humanity incarnate reclaimed Earth for itself. I'd make the best of it if I were you. Be kind to each other. And don't give up that which you love." He shoved himself out of his chair before she could answer and sauntered over to Aziraphale and the Them. "So, angel. What's the verdict?"


	25. Epilogue

Crowley has just miracled Warlock's eighteenth birthday card to him when his phone rings. "Yeah?"

"Nanny?" comes the hesitant young voice, cracking a little on the words, "it's Warlock. Can I- Can I still come home?"

"Warlock!" His voice warms and softens into Ashtoreth's accent. Across the room, Aziraphale catches the name and turns, his own face brightening. "Where are you? I'll pick you up."

"Ohhh." Warlock's voice is definitely shaky as he explains when he's arriving at Heathrow, ending with the hesitancy of a child who has learned that adults don't mean what they say, "If you're quite sure."

"My darling boy," Crowley tells him, gentle as only he can be, "there is a room here for you for as long as you need it. I should warn you that both Brother Francis and I look rather different these days..."

"Don't care, as long as you're you." Another hesitation. "I tried to look you up by name, but nothing showed on the search... Do you have another name I should use?"

"It's actually A.J. Crowley," Crowley tells him. "Ashtoreth when I present female, Anthony when I present male. But I'm Crowley all the time, and that's what most people call me."

"So I shouldn't call you Nanny?"

"Nanny is a title, not a gender. From you, Nanny is fine too."

"Ok. Look, I - I have to go. Boarding."

"Mind how you go, little hellspawn," Crowley murmurs, and the connection ends. He looks up at Aziraphale. "He wants, quote, to 'come home', angel," and Crowley's own voice cracks now that he isn't being strong for the boy.

Aziraphale smiles. "Then," he says, "we'll give him one, you and I."

***

Warlock drags his luggage off the belt and steps out into the arrivals lounge, already bracing himself for disappointment. He reaches up with his spare hand to clutch the charms he wears, and looks around. _We look rather different these days_ Nanny had said on the phone, but she had sounded the same. He looks rather different himself, it's been seven years after all. But then he catches a glimpse of red hair and sunglasses and a black clad arm waving, and his heart aches suddenly. 

He drags himself and his luggage across the floor, and Nanny's there, right there, with red hair drawn back in a simple ponytail and different glasses, and jeans, and a neat jacket, and looking - yes, different - but still ineffably  _Nanny. _ Casual female presentation, he notes, so she/her pronouns and Ashtoreth. They're the same height now, and Warlock hesitates, swallowing hard as if that will beat down the fears and tears choking him. 

Nanny says simply, "Welcome home," and it's enough to make the tears prickle against his eyelids again.

Then the man beside Nanny makes a small sound, and he doesn't look like Brother Francis except for those kind, changeable, eyes, but he's smiling, and he holds out his arms. Warlock drops everything else and sinks into the embrace, because Brother Francis still gives the best hugs in the world. (Nanny cares deeply, he knows, but she's never been much of a hugger.) Brother Francis holds him tight while Nanny rubs a gloved hand up and down Warlock's back, the way she did when he was a small boy waking from a nightmare, and he clings to their comfort for an endless moment before he pulls back and whispers hoarsely, "Thank you."

***

And around them, the world turns onward, because a young man being met and hugged by a mixed-gender couple looking the right age to be his parents isn't remarkable enough for anyone to notice. Even if they are an angel, and a demon, and a once-thought-antichrist, who turned out to be human in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here endeth the tale of their first year together.


End file.
